Cockroaches have been around for about 280 million years, a longevity record that has inspired Bloomberg to compare radio to the species. “Radio has survived everything,” this Bloomberg news video notes, “from eight tracks to iTunes, and so far, an onslaught of streaming music startups.” The piece cites industry claims that 92 percent of Americans […]
Archive | The Future
Festival of ideas looks outside radio for strategy and inspiration
Radio strategy consultant Mark Ramsey is hosting a one-day “ideas festival” for radio called Hivio in San Diego today. While I wish I could have flown out to sunny Southern California to attend in person, I’m glad to watch a live feed of the show from my back deck in sunny Chicago today. Ramsey introduced […]
Wasting energy? “Erratic” radio gives you wrong frequency on purpose
I am reading Evgeny Morozov’s diverting book To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism. The conclusion mentions a variety of machines that act dysfunctionally in some way, but for a purpose—to alert the user that s/he is wasting energy. Among the theorized gizmos that Morozov cites is an “erratic radio,” described by […]
Will the end of driving mean the end of radio?
US Pirg has released a new report on commuting patterns that has to be worrying some radio people: we are driving less. “The Driving Boom is over,” proclaims US Pirg Senior Analyst Phineas Baxandall. “The constant increases we saw in driving up until 2005 show no sign of returning. As more and more Millennials become […]
Rough notes: towards the end of Pacifica Radio (and the start of something new)
As the troubles facing Pacifica radio persist without apparent end, I sometimes wonder whether the five station listener supported radio network should voluntarily dismantle itself—that is, transfer its licenses to five local non-profit entities. I am not the first person to suggest this. Community radio pioneer Lorenzo Milam more or less laid the idea out […]
Is Twitter a radio station?
Perhaps inspired by its new report indicating that almost one in five Americans have listened to Internet radio in their cars, the Edison research group has a new revelation: Twitter is a form of broadcasting. Upon what evidence is this thesis based? The responses to a survey question that the outfit put to a sample […]
FCC Chairman tells NAB that “business is better,” but your public files are going online
The National Association of Broadcasters annual show and convention just started in Las Vegas, bringing together nearly every sector of the broadcast industry to show off new products, discuss trends and hob nob. Unfortunately, the Radio Survivor travel budget doesn’t yet cover more than cab fare across town, so we don’t have a correspondent on […]
They can take the radio out of Clear Channel (but that won’t take Clear Channel out of radio)
Friday the 900 lb. gorilla of commercial radio announced that it is changing its name to Clear Channel Media and Entertainment, striking the word “radio” from its name. Even though the company still owns 850 terrestrial broadcast stations–down from its post-1996 height of 1200–Clear Channel is trying to emphasize its belated focus on the internet, […]
Podcasting, satellite, internet and broadcast: it’s all RADIO to us
We, your humble Radio Survivors, are unabashed fans of broadcast radio. That much should be clear to anyone who peruses our site. But we hope that readers also see that we don’t limit ourselves to the AM, FM and shortwave dials. It’s vitally important to recognize that every time a new audio distribution technology comes […]
September 11 and the radio revolution
NPR’s Ombudsman has a new post promising “massive 9/11 anniversary coverage” this weekend. It mentions a listener who has protested the network’s use of the phrase “terror attacks.” “Terror did not attack us on September 11th, terrorists did,” she wrote to NPR. Terror does not have hands with which to use box cutters. Terrorists do. […]